Description: In this tutorial I’ll be discussing how to design a Clap sound that you can tweak and layer to taste for your tracks. For this example I’ll be using Ableton Live’s Operator. Weird right? I thought so too! In fact I probably would never use this synth to make a clap but I was up to the challenge. Is it possible to do so? The answer is yes. Simply watch the tutorial video and also you can look at my notes below for specifics on what to dial in on Operator. Osc A: attk 0, decay 1.18 s rel 404 ms Wav white nosie, Sustain off Filter: low 12db, freq 608 hz no res attk 19.5 ms, decay 345 ms, A slope 57%, D slope %100, R slope 100%, Envelop 62%, peak 66%, LFO: SwD L R 127 rate, amount 100% Env: decay 10.8ms release 1ms no sustain Destination Filter Dest B vol (100%) Loop 0.54 ms end -66db

Description: In this tutorial I will be crafting a white noise based swell which will help a tune transition from one section to the next. By using an EQ, panning, delay and automatic you can come up with endless flavors that will enhance your transitions. This technique of using heavy automation right before new sections can be also used with other instruments, not just the swell. This video will give an idea of how to implement this technique. Enjoy!

Description: Sometimes we have a stereo drum loop and we wish to apply processing to individual elements of the loop without affecting the entire thing. In other words, we might want to apply reverb or distortion to JUST the snare hits of the loop while leaving everything else untouched. This can be done either by manually chopping off the loop and putting the individual parts (snare, hats, kick, etc) into separate tracks. Or, we can side-chain a frequency selective gate and do some magic. On this tutorial I’ll demonstrate how to do this in Ableton Live. Side-chaining gates and reverbs can do wonders. Check it out!

Description: Add some real-life atmospheric sounds to your life-less midi samples and synth tracks and indeed bring them to real life! I hear this on most music by Burial and Boards of Canada. Of course, a lot of electronic musicians like Tycho and Aphex do it as well. Enjoy!

Description: When we hear a sound followed by it’s echo happening at an extremely fast speed, our brain interprets the sound as one. By extremely fast, I mean something around 30 milliseconds or less. However, our brain has the capability to distinguish the fact that one sound is happening first and then the other, as well as where the sounds come from (or which side). This is a concept that can be used to our favor when mixing music. And combined with panning techniques this can create wonders in terms of stereo spread, depth, and ambiance perception. This is called the Haas effect. Here’s an example: Let’s say you have a mono hi-hat track that you’ll pan all the way to the left speaker. Then you’ll send this track via a mono bus channel to a delay effect. Pan the bus channel all the way to right. Set the delay time to around 20 milliseconds. Play with the volume of both tracks so that the original signal is slightly louder than the delay track. What happens is that all of a sudden we have space, and space is a magical ingredient in music. We always want space. Check out this video for several ways to use HAAS delay to our advantage when crafting new music. Enjoy!

Description: I’ll cover decay, attack, and pitch automation as well as groove templates which will help your hats sound more natural and less machine gun like.

Description: Learn how to sample from your favorite records by using Ableton live’s built slice to midi function.

Description: In this tutorial I’ll go over a cool way to create drum tracks in Garageband 11. Garageband 11 comes with this cool new feature they call Drummer. You have the options of different styles, drummers, complexity of beats, dynamics, and all of these happen super fast. Check out this tutorial and see how to quickly map out a drum arrangement that will allow you to focus on your songwriting instead of your beat making.